Sunday, September 16, 2007

The explosionist

Here's a great video of the chemistry experiment that the girls are doing in the first scene of my novel.

Here's another good link that shows why chemistry used to be a more exciting activity for children than it can possibly be in our safety-conscious modern age.

Oliver Sacks's autobiography Uncle Tungsten: Memoirs of a Chemical Boyhood was where I first read about this experiment and realized it was what I needed.

2 comments:

  1. I love the comment in the Young Folks' Encyclopedia: The reason why so little iodine was used is that otherwise the explosion might be dangerous.

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  2. Oh that is lovely! I almost want to try it...

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